4 ms·
> "Thought experiment" does not mean you can make up whatever you want. The only thing we can agree on is that "thought agreement" means that you can't make up
by faangsticle 3y ago
> "Thought experiment" does not mean you can make up whatever you want.
The only thing we can agree on is that "thought agreement" means that you can't make up whatever you want :-)
- pdonis 3y ago"Thought experiments" that allow you to make up whatever you want are pointless, because you can also make up whatever answer you want. So the "thought experiment" tells you nothing. As actual physicists actually use thought experiments, they cannot make up whatever they want. Thought experiments involve taking a known consistent model and working out consequences of it that were not previously obvious or well known, and seeing where that leads. You can only do that usefully if you constrain the thought experiment by the model, i.e., if you do not allow yourself to make up whatever you want. Since the discussion here is about an article on physics, it seems appropriate to treat proposed thought experiments the way actual physicists would treat them. That is what I have been doing.
- faangsticle 3y agoLike I said, you can't.
- pdonis 3y agoAnyone who wants to do physics instead of just making stuff up can't.